Movie Review: Stargirl

This was movie #12/20 (#26 overall) that I watched for my 20 for 2020 challenge. This was released on Disney+ on March 13, 2020.

I thought this was a really cute coming-of-age movie. I call these kinds of movies “pretentious teen” movies. This sounds condescending, but I love these kinds of movies. It's just how I would describe these coming-of-age movies that are filled with poetry and indie music and just have this sense of feeling important and deep, usually in a way that is specific to the teenage/young adult experience. Some examples of this are Perks of Being A Wallflower and The Fault In Our Stars or The Half Of It, that I watched earlier this year. Stargirl effectively gives that coming-of-age, deep tone. The manic pixie dream girl aspect of the movie was a little annoying to me at first, but that type of character is pretty much attached to these pretentious movies. This movie is definitely aimed at a younger audience than most other coming-of-age stories, so it does deal with more innocent subject matter than most. This movie treats its young audience and their experiences seriously which I think makes it quite original and unique.

The soundtrack was good. One of my favorite parts of the movie was its impactful and important themes and messages. I also really liked the desert, small town setting of the movie. I think it really got that small town feeling right, and I also just think it was an original setting that isn’t shown very often. I do think the main conflict felt a little forced, but I understand why they had to include this to portray the themes of the movie. I liked that relationships were established not just between the main character and Stargirl, but also with his friend and mom. A lot of times these types of movies focus only on the romantic relationship and neglect other important relationships, but this movie gives attention to other relationships as well which lead to some really heartwarming moments.

I know Grace VanderWaal as a singer, so I thought she did a great job in this acting role. The rest of the cast was fine as well. I liked seeing Karan Brar in the cast as well. I have to shout out that I feel like the cast was decently diverse, so I appreciate that.

I would give this movie a 7/10. I thought it was a cute coming-of-age movie. Have you seen this movie? Let me know your thoughts down below.